- Date:
- Thursday , February 24, 2011
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Share:

AMD Radeon HD 6950 1GB Performance Review
We are pitting the new Radeon HD 6950 1GB video card against the Radeon HD 6950 2GB version and a GeForce GTX 560 Ti in apples-to-apples testing to see how they compare. We test at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 to push memory limitations and find which card provides the best gaming value.
Apples-to-Apples 1920x1200
We are going to start off our apples-to-apples testing at 1920x1200 with 4X AA enabled. This will not push the memory capacity as 2560x1600 will, but it will let us see if there are any GPU performance differences between the video cards. It will also give us a good impression how gaming at 1920x1200 with an acceptable level of AA will be. We are looking for several things in our comparisons, how the 1GB and 2GB Radeon HD 6950 video cards compare to each other and then how they both compare to the GTX 560 Ti. NVIDIA will tell you that its GTX 560 Ti GPU was built for the 1080P / 1920x1200 resolution crowd, so this is where we expect it to do best.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
In Battlefield: Bad Company 2 we are testing at 1920x1200 with 4X AA enabled. Interestingly we start off with discovering that all three video cards perform practically the same in this game at these settings. There is no difference at all in performance between the 1GB and 2GB Radeon HD 6950 video cards. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti is just barely faster than both, but the differences are so small that the gameplay experience is the same.
Civilization V
In this game we do experience a large difference in performance between the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti and the two AMD video cards. This game performs noticeably faster and smoother on the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. We did not experience any difference between the 1GB and 2GB Radeon HD 6950 video cards in this game at this setting.
F1 2010
In F1 2010 the tables reverse and it is the two AMD video cards that perform well above the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti. Once again however, we see no difference in performance between the 1GB and 2GB Radeon HD 6950 video cards.
Metro 2033
For Metro 2033 we have turned on the in-games 4X MSAA setting as well as "Very High" image quality at 1920x1200. We are surprised to see the two Radeon HD 6950 video cards performing almost 29% faster than the GeForce GTX 560 Ti in this game! Typically, NVIDIA video cards have performed superiorly in this game, but that is not the case anymore. The Radeon HD 6950 takes the lead by a great deal in this shader driven game. There is however, once again no difference in performance between the 1GB and 2GB Radeon HD 6950 video cards at this resolution.
Now let’s see what happens at 2560x1600 on the next page.




